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Here
C. S. Giscombe's Here is a long, single poem that takes place in a progression of three settings, three unlikely locations: the edges of the urban south, the edges—just beyond and just within the city—of rural Ohio, and the places where upstate New York forms the border with Canada, "the next country." Here is racial in its knowledge and acknowledgment of the great geographic archetype, the journey north; yet the work's nature denies the closure of destination. The poem's interest instead is in statement(s) of situation, in "the path traced by a moving point."
Details
ISBN-10
1564783383
ISBN-13
9781564783387
Publication Date
Feb 2001
Nb of pages
282
Dimensions 5.5 x 8.5 in.
Excerpt
(3 ideas about the future)
1. No real chance against the hidden facts ahead, the long view Forward into tighter & tighter cadences, to myself on the edge of them all inscrutable, looking like nothing— no chance in the ugly face of what’s coming, its moments hanging over that landscape (like heat or like the wilderness of voices) ...more
ReviewsPress Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Here is a powerful, understated meditation on place, ancestry and time . . . A diffuse, open technique avoids the hazard Giscombe identifies as 'aimless description' and is able to take in a great deal of material, mimicking the processes of memory. His concern with African American experience is all the more effective because he so well evokes his individual consciousness.
Quotations
C. S. Giscombe's book of poetry Here confirms his place as a major figure in contemporary African American letters. His deft use of the black vernacular is as impressive as Giscombe's obvious command of the American poetic tradition. Together, these two voices combine into a distinctive poetic diction, one black and timeless, as are Giscombe's great themes of love and departure. Here is a major book.
-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Giscombe's concise poems—which are always essentially unpredictable—have an odd and vivid beauty. They move in intricately woven patterns (like the candid language of risky dreams), from the emotional depths of the most private places to places post-personal yet not quite public. And they make this journey with elegance, eloquence, wit, knife-sharp observations, and tenderness. In short ...more
-Clarence Major
The reclamation of place too often serves a generalizing and presumptive romanticism—as though one had choice in being someone at any time or in any place. In absolute contrast C. S. Giscombe makes evident a genius of attention to all the determinants of any one of us, our particulars, our people. He traces with consummate art the passage of time though his own accumulating presence, his points of origin and return.
-Robert Creeley WE ALSO SUGGEST
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other titles related to Genres : Fiction : African-American Genres : Poetry Countries : United States of America |
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